Growing Stones
by Andrea Weiling
Summary: One-shot, pre-The Fire, Touya thinks about Shindou, not shonen-ai, rating's only PG for one bad word. No action, just thinking...unless you count Touya driving a shard of Go stone straight into his hand.


Growing Stones  
  
Clack. A white stone was there, shining like a star. He half- imagined he was the universe, and he was the maker of this little star that was his child, and he had to take care of it. But why would he think that? He wasn't the imaginative type; he could calculate math problems in his head, memorize French verb tenses and English vocabulary words five minutes before the test, and he could play Go like Honinbo Shuusaku. Or, at least he thought he could.  
  
And then he placed a black stone beside the white one, straight at the intersection of the lines. If the white stone was a star, what was the dark one? Was it part of the darkness of space, or was it a black hole waiting to suck him in and make him into a tiny little atom of matter, cramped and uptight? He picked up the stone and studied it, something he hadn't done before. It was smooth to the touch; but in his mind, he wanted it to be cracked, chipped, imperfect - he didn't want to be the black stone, imposing like a large obstacle. He placed it back on the board, this time near the star on the other side of the board. He looked at it for a little while, then reached for a white stone and placed that one too.  
  
Why was he playing this game again? He had stopped playing it for so long, almost a year and a half - why was he starting to play it again? He hadn't forgotten Shindou Hikaru, of course, hadn't forgotten that marvelous game they played at the Go salon. This was the second game, he was placing the stones faster and faster on the board now, their clacks so audible in the little room, ringing like scarlet bells in his mind. Yes, that was Shindou's voice, he could hear it - the singing of stars, he thought, so mysterious and so hard to reach - and yet they defied him even as they rose to meet him. He would play against Shindou again, that much he knew. He would play against him and wonder who that mysterious black hole was. Shindou was no white star. He was a dark stone, shining suddenly in the midnight black like some large, watching eye.  
  
Shindou had destroyed him, hadn't he? He'd destroyed his reputation for being a child prodigy at Go - he'd been unbeaten by anyone except for his father and in some of the informal matches they had at the study sessions with other title-holders. While a part of him remained smoldered with anger at the thought that someone had beaten HIM, he who was supposedly unbeatable, a part of him was fascinated that someone COULD beat him. He'd chased after Shindou, intent on playing again, feeling that adrenaline rush through his veins like rebirth with every stone that beginner laid down. He'd never been forced to think THAT much before in a match against anyone with the exception of his father - it was utterly preposterous that a beginner would beat him. How was it possible? How could he had stumbled on such a person and have his entire career broken before his eyes?  
  
They had all told him that he would become like his father. He'd play Go and he'd rise higher and higher, surpassing everyone until he hit the top. They'd told him that he had a marvelous life before him, full of victories and few losses. He tried to remain humble, but in his heart he knew that he was bloated with that pride that they'd installed in him, like a pillow stuffed too full with feathers. It wasn't right to be proud and haughty, he knew, and even though he didn't show it he FELT that way, he felt like they were giving him too much credit for something that he had just practiced at since he was young. He liked Go; they encouraged him to play, until he played day and night, in his waking dream and in his sleep, until everything he lived for was Go. He thought there was no other option - until he met Shindou, that boy who had NEVER played Go before and had beaten him with one stroke.  
  
He had only seen the side of Shindou that played Go. He had yet to see Shindou's other life - and yet he knew instinctively that they had very different pastimes. He could see Shindou at a CD store, at a manga store, at the mall, anything but at the table playing Go - while he was here, cooped in a room, laying stone after stone. He knew that it wasn't Shindou who was asking him this when he heard, "What are you doing? Aren't you still a child? Where are your friends? What do you do in your spare time?"  
  
"I work", came the answer. "I work and I don't stop." And he knew, for the first time, that there should have been a life outside of Go for him - he should have gotten friends, and went to the CD store and the manga store and then they would all go to the mall and play video games at arcades until their parents yelled on their cell phones for them to return home. He would have made a reckless, carefree teenager like the rest of them, like Shindou. He wouldn't be so stuck up, he wouldn't be so much the little adult as the little kid, just trying to have fun. He couldn't remember last when he went out and had fun like any other kid his age. All he could remember was placing stones, one after the other, and watching his hand grow larger and longer, the fingers slenderer and the nails worn smooth from constant handling of the stones. Somewhere in his waking mind he regretted that he hadn't had a childhood. But he didn't exactly regret playing Go for his entire life either.  
  
Shindou, he believed, got the best of both worlds. He'd stayed a child, and now he had become an Insei. He knew most of the kids outside, most of which he himself wasn't even remotely familiar with - and he knew that Shindou hung out with them at lunch, after school, during the weekends at the mall. They were all friends. Suddenly he felt very isolated, very abandoned, and very lonely. He should have been like them. He should have had a life like them, so carefree, able to live and feel like children while they still could. They were so young and he was so. . .old.  
  
His hand had long finished laying the stones to the second game. Now he reached down and crushed the game between his fingers, the Go stones jutting out from between like rounded black-and-white dinosaur spikes. For a moment, he hated it all: the game, the practice, the endless looking at the board and searching for answers, for new strategies to prove that he was indeed a genius. He was tired of pulling his mind this way and that to fit other people's expectations. He wanted to stop being an adult and began his childhood and start feeling emotions - he didn't know when he'd started to lock them away like they were poisonous. Why did he do that? Grown-ups did that; he was still just a child, he should have the right to feel and to do rebel things and laugh and shout; he should be able to do whatever he wanted just because he was a child. It wasn't fair that Shindou had so much. It wasn't FAIR that Shindou could have both Go in his hand and still have a childhood on the other!  
  
He picked up a black stone and squeezed it so tight in his hand that he began to feel his tendons cry out from the stretching. Still, the black stone didn't crack. He tried to crush it under a book; it just bounced on the rug. He began to hit it with the upturned Go board, regardless of the screamings that he heard downstairs and the hysterical tears that ran down his cheeks.  
  
"Damn you!", he heard himself shout. "I hate you!" And he brought the Go board down on a corner and the stone shattered in a million tiny pieces.  
  
Immediately he stopped crying. He looked down at it, and saw that the stone inside was an obsidian black, shiny like hazed-over marble. He could see his reflection in a million different facets, but all of them showed him, his streaked face and the frightened looking eyes that stared back at him. And suddenly he didn't want to see that face, his own face, so weak and vulnerable. Shindou was STRONG. He needed to be strong to, to beat Shindou. He placed his hand over one of the shards and felt it piece into his hand suddenly. Pain rolled up his shoulder, but he ignored it.  
  
He'd beat Shindou like an adult. He'd beat Shindou in the way he knew how. He wasn't a child, like Shindou was. When Shindou came, he'd call upon his complete knowledge of all those years of Go and prove that they weren't all waste. Shindou stood for everything that was free will, and suddenly he knew where he stood - he stood for discipline and rigidity, the completely opposite of Shindou. He'd beat Shindou where he knew best, on his ground, and then he'd see where Shindou's strength really stood.  
  
But in his heart, in his ugly, fatty heart that was swelled with compliments from a million other players, he knew that at least Shindou was prettier than he was. Shindou had what he hadn't had, was living what he couldn't live - he wanted that now, when it was too late. And for the first time in his life, he felt the tears well up in his eyes and sting at his eyes, and suddenly he couldn't see through all of that haze. It was so clouded - he was so confused - suddenly his thoughts seemed to come to a deadstop and he clenched that shard of a black stone in his palm until he could feel and see that red blood through the maze of eyelashes and tears as he felt his head collide suddenly with the floor so hard that he could see a million stars above him. And suddenly it was so bright when he couldn't breathe, and it was a strange thing that happened to him. Letters began to appear, right on the top of his eyelids, and he could read them from left to right, and they said simply:  
  
"YOU LOSE."  
  
And the sign turned black once he had finished it with a sound like the rushing of flames, and then all was silent.  
  
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \  
  
Author's note:  
  
What, you actually expected more? I told you it was pre-"The Fire", and that it was Touya thinking about Shindou and how they're different and all that jazz. If this is your first time reading this and you're wondering what "The Fire" is, it's a 3-part story that's on my fanfic list or whatever. *scratches head* Say what you want about it.I know this was more psychological, but that's just the kind of thing I write, I like messing with my character's minds and make them think funny stuff. I apologize, no action.  
  
A little commentary about "The Fire", that is, if you're interested. I did not mean that to be a shonen-ai story. It was just. . .well, a story about a person finding what being human is. If you didn't get that stuff about the hands making miracles and all that. . . um, I'm not quite sure why you reviewed if you didn't understand that. BUT, no, I didn't mean for it to have kissy stuff or anything in it; it was simply a finding of the soul or suchlike. Okay, I'll leave you to your own devices now.  
  
Andrea Weiling 


End file.
